


Ripped at Every Edge

by Jodygoroar



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 04x13, 2199 days, Angst, Companionship, Depression, F/M, Feels, Friendship, Gen, Grief, No Communication, Praimfaya, Reunited and It Feels So Good, Unspoken Love, bellamy thinks clarke is dead, bellarke seperated fic, braven brotp, coming home, life on the ark, space crew is on eligius ship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-09 01:33:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11094120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jodygoroar/pseuds/Jodygoroar
Summary: Based on this post (http://blyedeeks.tumblr.com/post/161411427763/imagine-bellamy-finding-an-old-photo-of-clarke) on Tumblr."Imagine Bellamy finding an old photo of Clarke with her family or with Wells in the ark and keeping it in his pocket for 6 years.Taking it out and looking at it whenever he missed her too much, or just at the end of every day so he wouldn’t forget how she looks like"





	1. Photograph

Bellamy stood at the window for hours after Raven roughly wiped the tears from her face and stomped off in search of a problem to fix. He stared down at the neon orange ball of fire that had once been the earth. The raging storm of nuclear fallout mirrored the torrent of anger and despair that swirled in his soul.

She was gone. Incinerated in Praimfaya, giving her very life to them. Clarke had abandoned herself to the end of the world for the chance that her friends might live.

There was an enormous black hole stretching inside him where his heart used to be. As the storm closed around the planet it exploded into life, sucking him bodily into the endless gravity of grief. Bellamy meant what he had said to Raven, so long as he had breath in his lungs he would keep them alive. He would single handedly drag this station back to the ground when the time came if that’s what it took to honor Clarke’s last sacrifice.

By the time his tears ran dry, Bellamy could no longer feel his legs. He must have been standing there near a day when Monty came to him.

“Bellamy…?” he asked cautiously.

“She’s not coming back this time, is she?” Bellamy sank to the floor, his knees giving out under the weight of his pain.

Monty sat beside him, placing a bandaged hand on his shoulder. He shook his head and whispered, “She saved us.”

In that moment Bellamy would have rather burned in Praimfaya beside her than have to walk through the rest of his life without her. “I love her, Monty,” he croaked, it took losing her in the apocalypse to finally say it aloud, “and I never told her.”

Tears stung in Monty’s eyes. His heart ached, for his friends, for the long road ahead of them, for the loss of Jasper and Clarke. His heart ached for Bellamy.

Everyone knew how much Clarke and Bellamy had loved each other. They’d been watching the two of them from day one on the ground. They hadn’t agreed in the beginning but there had always been that chemistry, an energy between them. As a scientist Monty had known it was just a matter of time. Now their time had run out.

“Come on,” Monty stood and awkwardly pulled Bellamy to his feet. “Let’s find you a room, you need some sleep.”

Bellamy let Monty drag him from the window, a numbness overtaking his nerves. They came along Murphy in the corridor who stepped silently under Bellamy’s other arm, hefting a bit of his weight from Monty’s shoulders. The two caught each other’s gazes, sharing a momentary look that said it all.

They had both been able to escape Earth with their girls. Emori and Harper were alive and safe and within reach. Sure, Raven and Echo were each alone, but Bellamy was supposed to have had Clarke. She was supposed to be here with them. It had been an unspoken assumption by the others that their imprisonment on the Ark would be the chance for Bellamy and Clarke to have time.

They laid Bellamy gently on a bunk in the room next to Raven’s and left him to swim the nothingness of blissful, exhausted, sleep.

Space was not so welcoming. Bellamy lingered somewhere between the world of dreams and nightmares. She came to him in every possible way he had ever know her. She stood in the sunlight, sarcastically correcting his arrogance. She lay in the glow of a campfire, fresh scars thrown into contrast from the flickering light. She stared at him from across a canyon pass, fear and determination filling her eyes. She stood, alone on the edge of a cliff, reaching for him. She was screaming at him, burning in Praimfaya, as he sailed away, unable to save her.

Bellamy woke screaming into the darkness, his long limbs tangled in the thread bare sheets. Sweat dripped from his body and tears streaked down his cheeks.

Raven burst through the door. He must have wakened her with his scream, she worn only a black tank top and dark blue boy shorts. She lingered in the doorway, unsure what to do.

“I… she…” Bellamy searched for words but found only the yawning emptiness inside him. Surely it would grow to the size of the universe and swallow him whole.

Raven tipped her eyes to the ground, her heart breaking for him and the love that he’d never spoken aloud. She pressed the door closed behind her and limped unsteadily to the bunk. Sitting beside him, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, holding him as his mother had when he was young and scared.

The touch was painful and comforting all at the same time. Bellamy gave into himself, crumbling against her, his tears falling freely.

They woke in the morning, still wrapped in one another’s arms, craving the comfort of human touch, of someone familiar. Bellamy was fearful a moment that it would be awkward, that she would expect something more. He chided himself at even having the thought as she gave him a weary smile and silently limped back to her room.

It went on like that for months.

Bellamy worked himself to the bone during the daytime hours, hauling machinery around the remaining pieces of the Ark Ring, working as Raven or Monty’s assistant when they were repairing the many complex systems they required to stay alive for five years. He would run between places, because the more he ran the easier it was to sleep. He was in no hurry, not anymore.

At night, he woke screaming from nightmares. He saw Clarke burn, her skin boiling off her bones. He watched as she melted in the radiation of Praimfaya. He watched her ashes get lost in the wind. He watched everything good about the world disintegrate in a blast of radiation.

His screams woke her, every night, and she came into his room silently, like a ghostly angel. She brought with her an understanding and a grief that matched his own. They wound around each other, clinging together, trying to anchor themselves to something real.

It was a need for comfort that drove Raven to his room every night, she’d never admit it to Bellamy, but most night she lay awake, waiting for his cries. It was a bonding of like souls, broken hearts fusing their ripped edges together in an attempt to be whole enough to carry on. It was purely emotional and it was the only refuge either of them had from the endless monotony of life on the Ring.

Eventually Bellamy’s wounds began to stitch themselves together, the raw, gaping hole in his chest slowly filling itself with the day to day tasks and conversations of the seven who made it into space.

Raven marked the days, an important part of her being captain, she claimed. “It keeps me busy, and it keeps me focused on the return trip,” she explained to Murphy in a no nonsense kind of way when he asked the point of her tiny tally marks that were slowly taking over the command center.

Somewhere around day 200 Bellamy decided it was time to sort out his room a bit. He’d done hardly a thing with the cold space Monty and Murphy had left him in that first night. He’d learned soon enough that the room, combined with Raven’s next door, had made up a part of the chancellor’s office. They had found all sorts of useful supplies and interesting documents from before the failed exodus had crippled the Ark. For days, he sat in the room, huddled under a single lamp, pouring through criminal files of people who had been convicted and floated. He read about their crimes, their so-called trials, and following executions. After catching one file with a painfully familiar name on it he set those aside for the delinquent prisoners’ files.

He flipped through files slowly, remembering faces and names and deaths. Monroe, Charlotte, Atom, Finn, Jasper, that one he gave to Monty along with his own. He pulled the photos from the files and tacked them one by one to the walls. Bellamy read slowly through the lines of neat text, all that remained of those who’d been lost. He lingered on each one, knowing that sooner or later he’d come across one that would rip him into shreds. It was under Harper’s file.

There it was, in bold black capital letters: GRIFFIN, CLARKE.

He thought of the last time he’d seen her name written out. It was the day he had declared, “If I’m on that list, you’re on that list.” Bellamy sucked in a breath, his lungs cracking at the pressure, and opened the file.

There she was, blond hair falling softly about her shoulders, a stern look on her face that screams, ‘you won’t beat me down’. She was younger than he’d ever seen her, fresh faced and a look of innocent determination about her. He pulled the clip holding the photo to the page, freeing the scrap of glossy paper. Pictures were a common thing on the Ark, every tablet had a functioning camera, there were dozens of pictures of every member of the Ark locked away in the system’s hard drives somewhere, but a photograph that you could hold in your hands? That was a rare thing reserved for official documents and the privileged who could pull a few strings.

Clarke’s file held two. Her standard identification photo, as he had expected, but what he was ill prepared for was the photograph that fell from the file when he stood.

It fluttered softly to the metallic floor below, a little worn and a little faded, it was the most precious gift he had ever been given.

Clarke stood beside Wells, he spotted Abby hugging a tall blond man, who was obviously Clarke’s father, in the background. It wasn’t just the candid feel of the photo, the way Wells looked fondly at Clarke, or the homey environment of their family compartment. The part that sent chills down his spine and sparked the tiniest bit of light in his cold heart, was the bright smile on her face.

The photographer, perhaps Jaha, had captured her in a moment of exquisite joy. Clarke stood, her hands clasped to her belly as she threw back her head and laughed. She looked happy and carefree, full of life and joy. He’d seen only a handful of her smiles when she’d been alive. So much of their time had been spent worrying about the earth, fearing the grounders and mountain men, struggling to stay alive, to keep their people alive.

This was a Clarke he had once imaged he was earning the chance to see. He told himself if they could make it through someday she would be happy and he would be witness to it. That day had never come, and now all he had was a photograph of a young girl who had no idea she would change his world forever.

Bellamy tacked the ID photo alongside Finn’s and stacked the remaining files away for another day. He left his room long enough to grab a bowl full of algae, then returned quietly.

He stared at the photo for hours, memorizing the lines of her face, trying to remember the sound of her laugh and the exact blue of her eyes.

Things went along uneventfully for years after that. Every day was much the same: wake up in Raven’s embrace, work all day long maintaining systems, meals of algae, and restless sleep hounded by nightmares. Eventually the nightmares became fewer and further between. Clarke came to haunt him less and less. It was both a blessing and curse. He was grateful for the reprieve but feared he would soon lose all memory of her. Aside from the photograph that he kept with him at all times, his nightmares were the only proof that Clarke had been real at all.

He took it from his pocket during quiet moments, he’d never shared it with the others, too selfish to let anybody else see the secret smile he’d come to think of as just for him. It brought him hope when he had none. It gave him purpose, when he saw no reason to carry on. When Bellamy was at his lowest he would take out that photo and remind himself he needed to make it to the ground. Thinking of Abby and the tearful smile she would give him at the sight of it kept him limping forward one second at a time.

The fifth anniversary came and went with little comment from the group. They’d known Raven hadn’t solved the fuel and reentry problem yet. Whenever they tried to make suggestions it only seemed to enrage her and frustrate her more. Echo seemed resigned to the fact they would live the rest of their lives in space. Murphy and Emori were anxious to return home, but wisely stayed silent on the matter. It was Monty and Bellamy who were most vocal about the issue. Monty threw out ideas left and right while Bellamy was Raven’s biggest cheerleader, reminding her she could do anything, that she would get them home.

One year after it was safe for them to return, Raven burst into the kitchen at dinner, excitement radiating off her like sunlight. She threw her arms wide and shouted, “Honor your queen, peasants!”

Which earned startled laughs from the ladies, a smirk from Murphy, and raised eyebrows from Monty.

Bellamy, Raven’s closest confident since Praimfaya, suspected the reason for her enthusiasm. “Raven?” he asked, almost without sound, tenuous hope laced through the words.

She caught his eyes, the energy in hers seeping into his slumbering soul. Dropping her arms to her sides, Raven smiled brightly, “I did it.”

At those words, the room erupted in cheers, a swarm of arms wrapping themselves around a laughing mechanic. They celebrated together, shouting over each other in their hurry to congratulate her amazingness and ask for details.

“Shut up!” she shouted, still laughing. “Look, we have at least a week of preflight crap to get through. I want everybody in bed in twenty minutes, lights out in twenty-five. It’s going to be non-stop work to get out of here within the week, and we all need our rest.”

The orders from their captain subdued the riotous energy in the kitchen, but not the smiles threating to tear their faces in half. They were going home, in a week. Dinner was shoveled away faster than any algae meal they’d had. They quickly dispersed to their quarters, Emori, Murphy, and Echo chattering away about the return to the ground. Harper and Monty snuck off holding hands, Bellamy guessed they had made up since their last fight.

He lingered a while in the kitchen, the excitement tasted dull in his mouth, like sand. Bellamy felt he might choke on it. Yes, he wanted to get out of space, to return to the ground. He wanted to see his sister. He wanted to show Abby the photograph and ask if he could keep it.

But, he also feared a return to earth, to where she had lived, to where she had died, may very well destroy him.


	2. A Transmission

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The space crew make preparations to come home, on their flight down they catch the end of Clarke's transmission on day 2199.

Raven hadn’t been joking or exaggerating when she told them they had a lot of crap to do before launch. They would be lucky to get it done in the week-long schedule she had mapped out. Every minute of every day between o-six-hundred the next morning and launch time was carefully allotted into categories. There were obvious slots for sleep, a generous seven hours (Raven required her team rested). Breaks for eating and daily Ark maintenance had been condensed into one hour blocks in the morning and evening with a twenty-minute break at noon.

They had no complaints with the rigorous schedule, knowing that every second, every electric shock, sliced finger, and drop of sweat brought them closer to going home. Raven had been fair in her captaining in the six years they’d been floating through space. She continued to lead them with a capability that earned her the role more than a few times over.

She had come up with the most hair brained idea they could have imaged. Murphy out right laughed when she explained it to them.

“There’s what?!” he grinned, getting a real chuckle out of what she’d said, “and we’re gonna what?!” Murphy slumped over in a fit of giggles. Emori smacked him lightly.

“There’s a ship floating towards us. It’s getting closer every day, it will be within reach in twenty-four hours. The systems read no signs of life and everything fully operational. We’re going to dock the ship and fix it to take us home,” Raven was grinding the words out through her teeth by the end.

Monty smacked Murphy on the other arm, hard, and asked, “How do we know it’s safe to board? Maybe there’s no forms of life because they’re not alive anymore.”

Raven shook her head, “No, the system’s basically on autopilot, and at maximum capacity. There’s nothing on board but the mineral deposits sent back from the mining company that owned the ship!”

Harper’s brow scrunched together, Emori and Echo exchanged confused looks.

Bellamy got to the point, “Raven, what does that mean?”

She sighed heavily at their thick headedness, “It means the ship is empty, it was sent back to Earth empty, and is loaded to the brim with fuel!” Raven threw her arms out, palms up, presenting the good news to them on a silver platter.

“We can land?” Emori asked, hope filling her voice. Emori, more than any of the others had been terrified of the crash landing Raven had proposed from day one. Murphy wrapped his arm comfortingly around her shoulders, pulling her into his side. The sight sent a pain shooting swiftly through Bellamy’s heart. The photograph in his back pocket seemed to burn him through the fabric, throbbing with the ache in his chest.

Nodding vigorously Raved said, “Yes, we can land. Safely, gently even. We’re not crashing. We’re going to fly to the ground.”

A fresh round of cheers bounced off the metallic walls of the command center.

Sheer excitement drove them through the first three days. It was hard, back breaking, oxygen depleting work. More than once, one of them came dangerously close to running out of air before making it back inside. On the second day, they anchored the ship to the anterior bay of the Ark Ring. By the end of the next it was safe to work inside without suits. That called for celebration and they knocked off early.

They had an extra three hours freed after the Eligius ship was stabilized and pressurized. Harper and Monty led the way into the kitchen, Emori, Murphy, and Echo followed. Their mission was simple: polish off the last of Monty’s moonshine.

Bellamy lingered behind, as much as he wanted to enjoy the company of his friends there was something he’d been meaning to do. Something he needed to do, and he was running out of time to do it.

Raven had stopped alongside him, sensing his internal battle. They had spent the last six years by each other’s sides. They slept curled around one another every night. They’d become each other’s anchors and north stars. She knew he ached still for the loss of Clarke. He would never be the same, and she couldn’t expect him to be. Raven knew that, she had understood that from the beginning.

“You with me?” he had asked, the world burning orange down below. She had known in that moment what he was asking. Bellamy would remember Clarke forever, her presence an eternal figure filling the empty space between them. The empty place where she should have been standing.

“Wanna talk about it?” she asked softly, understanding in her eyes.

Bellamy shook his head, brown curls bouncing low around his ears. His hair had grown long, it had been too many weeks since she had last cut it for him. Secretly she hadn’t reminded him on purpose. Raven remembered Clarke’s quiet confession once, she liked Bellamy’s hair long. And it was Raven’s silent gift to Clarke, wherever she was in the universe, that she’d let his hair grow nearly to his chin.

“No,” he answered solemnly, “there’s just something I gotta do.”

Raven stared at him a moment, concern knitting across her features.

Bellamy hugged her quick, “There’s just some stuff in my room I want to pack up for the trip.”

She quirked a perfectly arched brow at him.

“Raven, I promise,” he assured her, “I’ll join you guys in an hour.”

“All right, Blake,” she conceded. “One hour. Or I bring the laser cutter to open that door,” she threatened good naturedly, walking down the corridor after the others.

Bellamy shook his head at her, smiling despite himself. He turned away from the joyous sound of laughter and walked down the darkened hallway to his room.

The space would have been completely unrecognizable to its previous occupant. The walls were covered in photographs. Every ID picture from every file had wound up tacked to the walls. He’d grouped them into sections, the largest was of people he had never met. This group took up an entire wall and a half by themselves. The other groups were members of the 100, and the smallest group: the most important pictures. There were two, side by side, a brunette and a blond. Octavia’s young face stared angrily back at him beside a determined Clarke.

With a heavy sigh and a frustrated swipe at the tears threatening at the corners of his eyes, Bellamy began tugging the photos down one by one. He didn’t know how many people in the bunker would have connections to the people in these photographs, but he was determined to give them the chance to look. The solace he had gotten from the candid snot of Clarke laughing besides Wells had given him the idea to bring every single photo to the ground with him.

Within thirty minutes, Bellamy had cleared all but a handful from the wall, carefully stacking them in by last initial. He’d taken the time to write each person’s name on the back before hanging them. It had made him feel connected to them. It had made him feel connected to her. He would look at a person and imagine how he or she may have known Clarke.

He tugged Monroe’s photo from the wall and then Octavia’s, left with the only one that still ached in his heart. A single, silent tear feel down his freckled cheek as he pulled Clarke Griffin from the wall of his room, tucking her safely in his pocket beside the other photo. He kept it in his pocket at all times, he pulled it out when the others weren’t around. It brought him a bit of sunshine on this cold, dark station. As the years passed it became a lifeline to her, as his memories faded and she began to slip away. He would stare at her laughing and try to remember the sound. Now it was wrinkled, creases cutting across the perfect moment, faded, and ripped at every edge.

Bellamy sighed heavily and wiped the tears from his eyes, wondering if there would ever be a day he would think of her and feel only long-lost fondness rather than this stretching void of emptiness. He would have thought, after all this time, it wouldn’t still hurt so much. But he guessed that’s what an unspoken and lost love will do to the soul. It eats away at you until there is nothing left but bone and dust.

Busying himself putting away the other few things he wanted to bring back to earth, Bellamy stalled. He quietly tucked his memories and love for Clarke back into the lock box where his heart had once been. The others had begun to worry about him when he’d shown no improvement by year three, so he learned how to hide his anguish. Raven was the only one who knew how she haunted him still.

Eyeing the clock, knowing Raven was seconds away from storming out of the kitchen to his room, Bellamy closed the chest and headed out of the room, sparing once last glance over his shoulder at the empty walls, he vowed for the ten thousandth time that he would keep going.

For her.

Three days later, everything was set and they were strapped into the cavernous space of the Eligius mining ship. Launch was in three minutes, Raven was counting down, marking every thirty seconds, then ten, suddenly she was counting down from sixty and it was time.

Bellamy’s heart lurched as the ship released from Ark Station.

This was it, they were going back to the ground. The sonic boom that exploded out from the ship as they broke through the atmosphere was deafening. A burst of static filled the room at the same moment. When Bellamy’s ears finally popped a few seconds later he nearly missed the sound coming through the com system.

“…I see you…”

It had been so faint he nearly missed it among the drowning sound of interference. Bellamy knew it was there, he’d heard her voice. He was about to mentally shake himself; there was no way she was alive, not after so long, not after Praimfaya.

But then he caught Raven’s eyes, she’d heard it too. “Clarke?” she whispered, tenuous hope coloring her voice.

They strained their ears, seeking any bit of human sound coming from the ocean of mechanical noise. Nothing more. 

Radio silence fell and they landed without another sound.


	3. After All This Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy makes it back to the ground and learns that Clarke is alive.

Bellamy was certain his heart would fill his chest to bursting. It had been so faint and distorted, but it was there. She was there.

Clarke.

Her voice, mingled inside the static noise of earth’s reentry, was the most beautiful thing he had ever heard. The information rattled around his empty head, knocking against the inside of his skull like rocks in a bucket. His heart knew it the instant her voice came through, but his brain refused the information, pushing it away and the hope that bloomed with it.

By the time they had landed and Raven cleared them to get out of their seats, Bellamy still couldn’t get his brain to accept the knowledge his heart was thrusting on him. His survival instincts had kicked in full gear, harder than they had since Praimfaya, this could kill him. His mind kept letting the idea that she may still be alive slide down the inside of his head like rain drops down a window pane.

Monty and Murphy were exchanging glances, somewhere between hopeful, excited, and worried. He released the buckle on his restraints, sagging under the weight of the universe on his shoulders.

Raven took charge and starting shouting orders at the group, moving everyone into a scurry of motion and post landing checks. After they were all occupied with their tasks, Raven came over and sat in the empty seat beside him.

“Bellamy,” she whispered, urging him to look up at her.

His eyes found hers in the dim light of the landing ship. On her face, Bellamy saw every bit of the war battling inside himself, but he also saw the hope winning in Raven’s eyes. Tears stung at the back of his eyes, threatening to drown him in a tidal wave of heart break if this glimmer of hope was unfounded.

“Let’s go home, Bellamy,” she said, the hope spilling into her smile.

Sighing heavily, Bellamy nodded and stood from his seat, a little lightheaded.

“Let’s go folks!” she shouted in her captain’s voice, “Harper, Monty, how’s it coming with the door controls?”

“The circuits got fried a little in the landing, give me a minute!” Monty hollered in response.

Raven affectionately rolled her eyes, and limped over to help. After more than six years, she had developed an almost normal gate, strengthening her right to compensate for the nerve damage in her left.

In his mind that voice echoed on an infinite loop, pleading with him, _hear me_ , and finally it sunk in. Clarke’s voice came over that radio, Clarke was alive and she was out there, waiting for him. Bellamy wouldn’t let her wait another minute.

“What’s with the door, Monty?” he asked, striding over, a smile breaking the permanent frown that had taken over his face.

Raven put her hand on his shoulder, his joy was contagious, seeping into their faces as well.

“He’s just not as genius as I am,” Raven teased, gently punching Monty’s shoulder and earning a glare.

“I almost...got...” Monty grunted and shouted as electricity sparked out from the panel. Whatever he had done caused a black spot on the wall but the door released and began to slide open slowly.

Cheers broke out amongst the group as the daylight cut into the dimness of the ship. The door slid open and locked into place with a loud ‘thunk’. The only noise after that was the sound of the wind and their breathing.

Bellamy’s heart raced as he moved forward and stepped off the ship.

The loud distinct sound of a rifle cocking stopped him dead in his tracks. The shout that followed was like hearing music for the first time.

“Don’t move,” Clarke’s voice sounded from the tree line.

Bellamy raised his hands slowly in the air, showing he meant no harm, and tugged his helmet off. He turned towards the sound of her voice and shouted, “Don’t shoot, Princess!”

At that she emerged from the forest like a ghost from the shadows. It was like watching the sun rise. He squinted, overcome by her beautiful light.

Clarke stood amongst the infantile forest clad in worn brown leather that hugged her every curve. Her hair hung in waves to her chin, streaks of Wanheda red laced into the gold. Shock was plane on her face until that little mole twitched at the corner of her lips and she smiled wide.

“Bellamy?” she shouted, her rifle hung loose over her shoulder. “Raven!” her excitement bubbled over as the dark-haired mechanic stepped out beside Bellamy.

Monty and Harper followed side by side, Murphy, Emori and Echo in the back. Clarke took off, half running, half sliding down the hillside towards them. She didn’t stop moving until she barreled into him, flinging her arms around his neck with enough force to knock him back into the others.

Bellamy burst out laughing at the attack, wrapping her up in his arms, “Hello to you, too.”

“Bellamy,” she said, needing to say it aloud. She reached her fingers back, still hugging him fiercely, “Raven, Monty, Harper.”

Tears began sliding down cheeks, emotions running high, “Murphy, Emori, Echo.”

They each hugged her over Bellamy’s shoulders. Smiles flashed brightly and laughter filled the air.

Bellamy clung to her, his hands moving up and down her back, needing to feel her, to have her in his hands and know she was real. Raven noticed the moment and started directing the others in unloading their gear.

“Clarke,” he whispered into her ear, “I thought you were dead.”

She pulled back and smiled at him, “I hoped you were alive.”

It was like finding the sun after years of rain. She was so bright and vivid he could barely look at her.

He didn’t dare look away.

Bellamy was willing to go blind staring into the light of the burning star that was Clarke Griffin.

**Author's Note:**

> There will be at least a second part to this where Bellamy learns that Clarke is still alive.


End file.
